Blog relating to the American Presidency, specific American Presidents, and First Ladies. Posts by online college instructor Jennie Weber with additional posts by site founder Dr. Michael Lorenzen and Elementaryhistoryteacher.

Monday, January 07, 2008

1852 Democratic National Convention

Since I posted a complete proceedings of a Republican National Convention, I found a Democratic National Convention to also post (again from Google Book). The 1852 Democratic National Convention resulted in the nomination of Franklin Pierce (and of course his eventual election to the Presidency). The convention was held in Baltimore from June 1-5, 1852. It took 49 ballots to agree on Pierce as the Democratic candidate. As you can see from the different votes, there were a lot of candidates and the numbers were all over the place. Enjoy!

3 comments:

I just had to write a brief bit on this for work, to accompany a great image I found in the LOC of a Pierce campaign banner. Totally worth checking out.

It's also worth noting that when he was nominated, Pierce had not held a political office in nearly a decade. He'd quit the Senate to resume his law practice in 1842 to escape the temptations of drink.

Pierce's wife (Jane) also detested the political life and wanted his return his law practice. Franklin actually lied to Jane about his nomination (she found out the truth later), saying it was forced on him, not that he had lobbied for it, which he had. Then, of course, when the Pierces last surviving son is killed on their way to Washington, Jane literally went insane.